Abstract: A method includes determining a garbage collection list for a data storage structure of a node in a data storage system, the garbage collection list including one or more layout map identifiers (IDs) for garbage collection. A data fragment stored on the data storage structure is located at a first location and a layout map ID associated with the data fragment is determined. A determination is made whether the layout map ID associated with the data fragment matches a layout map ID for garbage collection in the garbage collection list. If the layout map ID associated with the data fragment matches a layout map ID for garbage collection in the garbage collection list, a determination is made whether the data fragment is present at a second location on the data storage system. If the data fragment is present at a second location on the data storage system, the data fragment at the first location is determined to be a garbage fragment and deleted from the data storage system.

Abstract: A method for recovery of data objects on a data storage system includes determining a list of layout map IDs that place data objects on a node of a data storage system. For each layout map ID, a list of object IDs associated with each of the data objects assigned the layout map ID is determined. For each object ID, a list of data object fragments associated with the object ID is determined. A determination is made whether each of the data object fragments is present on the node. If a data object fragment is not present on the node, the data object fragment is reconstructed on the data storage system. The method can be automatically implemented by each of one or more operational nodes of a distributed data storage system at configured time intervals, and/or upon the operational loss of a data storage structure of a node, or a node.

Abstract: A system and method for allocating the nearest available physical memory in a distributed, shared memory system. In various embodiments, a processor node may broadcast a memory request to a first subset of nodes connected to it via a communication network. In some embodiments, if none of these nodes is able to satisfy the request, the processor node may broadcast the request to additional subsets of nodes. In some embodiments, each node of the first subset of nodes may be removed from the processor node by one network hop and each node of the additional subsets of nodes may be removed from the processor node by no more than an iteratively increasing number of network hops. In some embodiments, the processor node may send an acknowledgment to one node that can fulfill the request and a negative acknowledgement to other nodes that can fulfill the request.

Abstract: A system and method to allow scalability of file storage in terms of capacity and performance through a symmetric multicomputer architecture with shared storage, in which storage and protocol processing resources can be added to (or removed from) the system without any need of recognizing and/or explicitly migrating the data stored in the system. The invention permits accessing files stored (i.e., written) in any of multiple external protocol processing nodes to be retrieved from any other external protocol processing node.

Abstract: A system and method to allow scalability of file storage in terms of capacity and performance through a symmetric multicomputer architecture with shared storage, in which storage and protocol processing resources can be added to (or removed from) the system without any need of recognizing and/or explicitly migrating the data stored in the system. The invention permits accessing files stored (i.e., written) in any of multiple external protocol processing nodes to be retrieved from any other external protocol processing node.